


satiate your hunger with a quickness

by voodoochild



Category: Billions (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Supernatural Elements, Blood Drinking, F/M, Mind Control, Origin Story, Psychic Abilities, Sorcerers, Vampires, Vignette, Witchcraft
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-05-19
Updated: 2020-05-19
Packaged: 2021-03-02 23:27:58
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,137
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24265096
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/voodoochild/pseuds/voodoochild
Summary: Bobby and Taylor contemplate who and what Wendy Rhoades really is. [Supernatural AU]
Relationships: Bobby Axelrod/Wendy Rhoades
Comments: 4
Kudos: 12





	satiate your hunger with a quickness

**Author's Note:**

> Title from Sage Francis' "Make 'Em Purr".
> 
> Love to E1 for the brainstorming and beta. We both know there's more to this story, but we don't know what it is.

The whispers start every time she goes up to his office.

How is it possible? How can she stand his presence? How can a human get within a hundred feet of a master vampire and not be a midnight snack?

What is she, really?

After a dozen years, she barely even hears them anymore, but still they persist. Who and what is Wendy Rhoades - ostensibly the only human on the payroll at Axe Cap - that she can walk through the doors every day and have a building full of vampires and at least two masters feeling no bloodlust whatsoever?

It's not that none of them have tried. Every newbie trader bares his or her fangs at Wendy at least a handful of times during their first month. If they don't get the hint that she isn't frightened, they usually make ever-more-escalating idiots out of themselves until they give up. Some of them take the hint gracefully, and settle into a working relationship. Some don't - cause trouble, get handsy, try to take a bite out of her.

Most of them find out the hard way that, when you touch Wendy Rhoades without her permission, she'll make you wish you'd never been sired, one way or another. 

You might find, for example, that her hair has turned to snakes - of which you are deathly afraid, aren't you? You might find her skin covered in decay, rotting and putrid, enough to make you run for the nearest shower. You might find she slips through your fingers like water, and then all of your insides turn to it.

After an experience like that, you might find yourself praying Bobby caught you instead. The temper of a territorial master vampire is pretty straightforward, and if he's feeling magnanimous, he'll leave your skin on your body while he plays with his toys.

Bobby is absolutely vicious, but he can be anticipated. 

Wendy cannot.

***

When Taylor Mason first meets Wendy Rhoades, they don't even get through the door.

They've always been a Sensitive, and while they've inured themself to vampire auras, Bobby makes their head hurt. They take pride in it - they are the first Sensitive to work for a hedge fund, to be admitted to the crown jewel of the Manhattan vampiric world. A couple of headaches a day is a small price to pay for work that is this satisfying, for a crash course in pulling the strings of currency the way only Bobby Axelrod can.

Taylor takes their blood thinners, resets their schedule to night hours, and pops Imitrex like candy. Gets used to the teasing from the vamp traders like Mafee (and really, who the shit thought Mafee would make a good vampire?) and the power plays from the wannabe masters like Dollar Bill (who may just make the final jump if Taylor's any judge of power). They think they're fitting in well, succeeding . . .

And then Wendy Rhoades returns to Axe Cap, and calls Taylor to her office.

Taylor is curious, of course, about the mysterious Dr. Rhoades, and had put their not-inconsiderable research skills to the test of finding out everything about her. They pour over Wendy's life, and on paper, Wendy is utterly and brain-numbingly human. First husband turned six months after the divorce. Children born naturally and shielded with her former father-in-law's influence. Hell, she's even recently had the flu.

They make their way to Wendy's office - which had never stopped being Wendy's office, even when Dr. Gus had saged and deconsecrated and eventually slaughtered a goat - and Taylor finds themself standing outside the door stuck in place like they've been glued. 

If Bobby causes headaches, Wendy's like drowning - gasping for breath and hoping you could hit the surface.

"What are you?" they ask, as the door opens.

Wendy is there in a blue dress and shoes with heels like knives, and she smiles. "Do you know," she says, as the pain begins to white out, "you're the first to even get this far?"

"Bobby-" Taylor starts, but can't finish, it hurts too much.

"Bobby's never had to try me. He knows I'd win."

***

When Bobby was twenty-eight years old - the day he was turned - he met a girl in the ashes of Lower Manhattan.

He rages at her, because all he ever wanted was to stay human, be better than the Clans (Vampire, Sensitive, Human, he'd beat them all, and now he belongs to one). She laughs at him and says there's another way, before the sheer terror and hunger nearly drives him mad.

She shows him the truth: humans are prey no matter their protections, sensitives malleable into pawns or weapons, and vampires? Slaves to the dawn and silver and bloodlust. He will need her if he wants to rule over this scorched earth, and all she wants in return is the proper respect.

Her name is Wendy, and she is the sole living sorceress in this country. 

(He'd read about the Sixth and Final Hunt in school and had became obsessed. He'd traveled to Iceland, had met Hall and seen firsthand what a sorcerer could do. He never dreamed of having one of his own.)

He never even felt his knees hitting the ground until he looked up at her. The most beautiful and terrible thing he'd ever seen, and he feels his hours-dead heart beat within his chest as she draws a silver dagger. 

"Swear yourself to me," she said, "and I will make you king. Say it three times."

"I swear." 

She nicked a cut over her palm and smeared a drop against his ravenous mouth. He tastes the hot tang of blood, but underneath she's bitterness, heat, and righteous anger. "One drop will give you glimpses of the past, so you will know your enemies' sins. Do you swear again?"

"I swear." 

It takes an age to drag his gaze away from her palm and up to her chest, where she's flicked the knife over her left breast. Beckons him up, and oh, such a sweet taste. Joy.

"The second will give you the future, to a point. All that it is possible to know. Do you swear a third time, Bobby?"

He smiles, her blood on his lips. No vampire has tasted magical blood for centuries, and she's chosen him.

"I swear that I am yours."

The silver knife flashes at her mouth, scarlet staining her lower lip, and he kisses her. Seals his fate to hers.

"Yes, you are," she murmurs as she breaks the kiss, raising him to his feet. 

He stands taller, stronger, hears the beating hearts of the city, feels the fires that still burn and knows he will rebuild it in his image. In their image. She smiles, as if she can see his prophetic dreamings.

"Keep your promises, little one. I'd like my kingdom."


End file.
